February, ’20] 
O’KANE: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
49 
or organized religion or organized thought are dead morals and dead 
religion and dead thought. Yet some organization you must have. 
Organization is like killing cattle; if you don’t kill some the herd is 
just waste. But you mustn’t kill all or you kill the herd.” 
For most scientific workers it must appear that the ordinary day is 
filled with a multitude of minor duties. Routine of some sort absorbs 
an extraordinary proportion of our time. In the midst of this it is 
difficult to see how we may find opportunity for thoughtful and con¬ 
structive adjustment. This round of routine is apt to grow more 
extensive and exacting as the scientist advances in professional rank 
In the midst of this distraction it is well to realize that any man, in 
any pursuit whatever, finds a multitude of details that must be done in 
order to carry forward his work. Even in purely creative work, in 
writing or painting, there is a necessary routine that will astonish one 
who has not observed such work in the making. Doubtless it would 
impress us as drudgery to spend weeks in study of a set of blank 
walls, yet that was a part of the process by which Michelangelo exe¬ 
cuted his great frescoes. We are charmed by the beauty and vivid 
detail in the novels of Scott, but we find that he spent many days in 
intimate study of the topography, botany and geology of a locality 
before he used it as the setting for one of his incomparable scenes. 
All of these details were necessary means to an end. In no other 
way could that end be achieved. And because they were'necessary 
they were a part of that end. They helped to bring about the con¬ 
summation of an ideal. In so doing they, themselves, became a part of 
that ideal in just the same essential degree that the foundations of a 
building, deep beneath the ground, are an essential part of the final 
structure. 
So, in the routine of our work as scientists, details have their part in 
building toward an ultimate ideal. Without the interest of that ideal 
they are so many bricks and so much mortar, heavy to handle, dreary 
to contemplate and devoid of any attractions. But from these mate¬ 
rials we may, if we will, build structures whose service and beauty are 
limited only by our capacity and enthusiasm. 
A purpose, then, is the alchemist which can transform a day’s 
drudgery into a day’s progress. If it should be that interest itself is 
fundamentally lacking for any of us, then there must be a misfit 
somewhere and if there is a misfit there must be a change. A change 
may be of two sorts. In rare instances the circumstances may be 
such that a change of occupation is really the only way out of a 
difficulty. But usually it is not that which is needed. It is a sub¬ 
jective question rather than an objective. The alteration required is 
in our own viewpoint rather than the thing viewed. 
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